It was not so long ago that Republicans threatened to "nuke" the Senate if Democrats employed the filibuster to block President Bush’s judicial nominees, particularly those to the Supreme Court (which in light of recent decisions, they clearly should have).
Fast forward two years later, with Democrats narrowly in control, and the Senate is in a state of permanent filibuster. It takes 60 votes to get "cloture" and pass just about anything.
As a result, pieces of legislation that won a majority but failed to garner 60 votes, such as the Employee Free Choice Act, a minimum wage increase without tax breaks for business, major investments in renewable energy and mandates for clean-energy sources, the importation of cheap prescription drugs from Canada, allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices under Medicare, countless amendments to the immigration bill and on and on.
We are told this is just the way the Senate works. Fine. But there is a clear double standard in terms of media coverage. No one reported that Republicans "filibustered" the Employee Free Choice Act. And no Democrat is vowing to nuke the Senate as a consequence.
During the debate over the "nuclear option" Matthew Yglesias and a handful of other liberal dissidents urged Republicans to proceed, arguing that in the long run the filibuster was a major impediment to progressive change. Perhaps they were right.
